Carts & Coins · published
The road has a memory now. The people you help, rob, pay off or turn away can come back, sometimes days later and sometimes in a town you haven't reached yet. Towns get their own visitors, wild camps get fireside meetings, and the whole economy has been rebuilt around towns two and a half times bigger.
Big choices on the road can bring somebody back. If you help a merchant with a broken cart, they may sell you spice at cost in the next town. If you rob them, their brothers come looking for you.
Callbacks wait for you on the road ahead or in a town. Some ask for you in one named town, others in whichever town you reach next. If you miss them, they wait in the next one until their time runs out.
Any answer that brings somebody back says "They will remember this." when you hover it, so you know before you pick.
The quest journal has a new Who will find you list showing who is coming back and where they'll be. When you meet them again, the meeting tells you so.
Some of the stories that now come back:
The traveller you tended or gave a ride to
The fake tollmen, who come back for more if you paid them (pay twice and they find someone else)
The hungry orc hunters you fed, who return with venison and hides or show you every den nearby
A fallen officer's mother, if you carried his sword home from the battlefield
Riders hunting the deserters you bought kit from
A song about you, if you paid the travelling bard
The real Orlan Vey, the man the debt collector was actually after
The thieves of the cave, and the Pied Piper you paid, from the folk tales
Towns now have meetings of their own. When you arrive, somebody may be asking for you. The new Visitor button on the left glows and shows who it is on hover. Nothing opens until you press it, so you can ignore it and keep trading.
A pickpocket working the crowd
A fortune-teller reading omens for a coin
Fire in the warehouses: a building in the street catches fire, the camera goes to it, and you can help put it out
A loud rival who may become your partner or your grudge
A debt collector who has the wrong man
A man with a crate he would very much like you to carry
A steward with an order from a great house: deliver the goods to another town and earn 30% over what they're worth
A garrison quartermaster who buys half your stock of a good on the spot, no stall needed
A mapmaker who sells local maps and buys your road notes
A wrestling bet: put gold on your best guard, or take on the blacksmith yourself
A festival in town: rent the pitch by the fountain or decorate your cart
A puppet show about you, once you've made a name for yourself
When you camp in the wild at a ford, a ruin or a crossroads, someone may come to your fire. They wait behind the same Visitor button.
A stranger at your fire: a storyteller, or a thief. Watch their eyes.
Wolves at the edge of camp
Lights in the dark (night only)
A lost child, whose family may find you in the next town
Rider in trouble, a dead courier, hungry orc hunters, a man buried in the road, pilgrims who want company, a fresh battlefield, masked dancers (a feast or a cult) and refugees on the road
Most of these are about help, lore or mood rather than danger, so the road isn't only ambushes
Every meeting was played through as different kinds of players would play it, and these rules now hold everywhere:
Every hostile meeting has a sure, peaceful way out that costs something. You can always pay instead of gambling or fighting.
Wherever a fight makes sense, you can choose to start it.
Every meeting opens with a choice, never a forced fight, and you can always just leave.
Time costs are shown before you choose.
Dangerous twists show a sign first. The lost cart trap and the abandoned camp now give a warning you can read before you act.
Changes to older meetings:
Ghost at the crossroads: anyone can now find the bones and bury them, not only players with Grave Speech
Gamblers at a fire: watch a few rounds first and you may spot the loaded die
Wounded traveller: give them a ride to the next town, even with no medicine in the cart
A mother on the road: the shapeshifter twist can now be escaped by throwing it food or dropping crates
Meetings that tell you news now say it out loud, instead of leaving a line that ends on an empty colon
Wayside strangers now look like who they are: goodwives, a street child, a priest, a scholar, burghers
New portraits for the folk tales and road meetings, including Ali Baba, Sinbad, Midas, Loki, Koschei, the Firebird, Rusalka, the Wild Hunt, Robin Hood, Red Riding Hood, Diogenes, Sisyphus, Urashima, Tam Lin, the Sirens, the Shahmaran and many more
Figures on the road for the same meetings, plus visitors who walk up and stand by your caravan while you talk
Town gates redrawn for every culture. Gates are now seen three-quarters on from the road, and your caravan drives through the gatehouse instead of past a flat front.
A gold coin symbol now replaces the "g" after every price in the game
Towns are about 2.5× bigger. Purses, rents, treasuries, caravans and new villages have all been scaled to match, so a town's footing feels the same at the larger size.
Big cities and capitals now have enough workshops for their people. Before this, a third of their adults were out of work from day one, and cloth and tools ran short everywhere.
Shepherds shear more wool, which fixes the worldwide cloth shortage
Inland regions can now have brine wells and rock-salt pits, so salt no longer costs three times its value far from the coast
Workshops stop producing once their unsold stock piles up, and people only leave a trade once it has clearly stopped paying, not after one slow market day
Soldiers, officers and priests are paid closer to what other trades earn, and crowns tax more lightly when their chests are full. Crowns no longer hoard tens of thousands of gold.
Armies keep drawing soldiers from their towns as garrisons grow, instead of staying a handful all game
Rich towns' prices now rise further with the coin their people hold
Haggling: the three ask buttons never show the same amount. On cheap goods you no longer get three buttons that all say +1.
The haggle panel shows what you paid for the goods, highlighted when an offer would sell at a loss
Father's notes are now one card: the current page, plus his tips on what to buy in this town and where it sells
Autosave now lights a small mark on the top bar instead of showing a pop-up on every arrival
The wait icon sits beside the pace controls, lights up while waiting, and stops if you press it again. Wait options that end at the same time are merged into one.
The camp crew bar steps aside when your team is rested
A delivery's map marker now follows the company the recipient is travelling with
The nearby panel steps aside in the inn, guild halls and while arranging the caravan
If you push a trader too far during the buying lesson, the tutorial no longer gets stuck. It points you to another trader, or your father has a word and they'll sell to you again.
Thanks for playing, and safe roads!